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Memory and the Holocaust: processing the past through a gendered lensDepartment of Political Science, University of Missouri-St Louis, 347 SSB Building, 8001 Natural Bridge Road, St Louis, MO 63121-4499, USA.mushaben{at}umsl.edu Viewed through the prism of gender, race and generational change, memories of the Holocaust acquire a dynamic and a salience that differ substantially from one group to the next. This article examines the role of gender in sustaining and reconfiguring such memories in Germany; it argues that female victims and perpetrators are moving towards common ground in processing Second World War experiences as they anticipate their own deaths. Ranging from active collaborators to bold resistance fighters, some women proved both deeply reflective, others almost oblivious to the horrors occurring around them, as revealed by (auto)biographical texts. ‘Women under the Nazis’ were not a subordinate, uninformed mass, easily exploited by a megalomaniacal patriarchal establishment; still, their many roles were rated as ‘insignificant’ in configuring the master narrative. The unequal treatment accorded women in the 1940s still shapes the unequal slave-labor compensation accorded women half a century later. This raises new questions about the need to re-establish communication between the generations for the purpose of transmitting lessons of world-historical magnitude linked to the Holocaust.
Key Words: collaboration • gender and memory • Nazi women • slave labor • Vergangenheitsbewältigung
History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 17, No. 2-3,
147-185 (2004) |
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